This
might be hard to follow. I use three by five cards or a
loose leaf binder. I’ll begin with Syrie Nathan, my
birth mother. What little information I have comes second
hand. Much has to be inferred. School records at
Manchester Central High School in the scenic Granite State show
she was not a great student. Somewhere I picked up a tidbit
that addressed her obsession with dolls and playing house when
she was little. That fits right in with her wanting
marriage and a family at a very young age, her junior year of
high school.

I doubt she ever read Darwin, but she seems to have fixated on
attracting the best male she could for her reproductive scheme.
There are allegations that she broke into the guidance department
files and looked through student records for some key
indicators—IQ, reading test scores, any hereditary or
medical conditions. She narrowed down her search for the
perfect mate to three boys, one each in the tenth, eleventh and
twelfth grades. Why she focused on Ronnie Banks, my
subsequent father, is a mystery. Maybe she tried seducing
the other two and struck out; maybe he was her first choice.

From the only photo I have of him, he was not a bad looking.
He had dark hair, a swarthy complexion, broad shoulders, the
build of a cross country runner, which he was, and a shy smile.
He was very bright, high honors in all the advanced classes, 1550
on the SAT’s, and editor of the school paper. My
guess is that he never knew what hit him when it came to Syrie’s
sexual blitzkrieg.

I have several pictures of my mother. None flatter her.
She has an oval face and is a bit chunky, especially in the chest
and hips. When and where she snagged Ronnie is anyone’s
guess. I came along in mid-October of 1987 so it had to be
in late January or early February. I’m sure being a
daddy at sixteen hit him hard. His dream of going to
Bowdoin went down the drain to say nothing of what his friends
and family now thought of their fair-haired boy. I suspect
that after the initial shock he might have suggested a practical,
medical solution to the pregnancy problem, but Syrie continued to
live in her romantic world and would have none of it but the
three of them in a vine covered cottage.

He tried to do what was best. He never came back to
school for his senior year. She was showing big time by
then, and people who knew her reported that she was sure it would
be a boy because she was carrying so high. Horoscope readings
also entered the picture. He went to work full time at
Radio Shack. They still lived with their parents, and I’m
not sure he ever had much contact with her, sexual or otherwise,
except to drop off some money when he could.

She went into labor on October 14. It was a long,
drawn out affair and thirty-six hours later, on the 16th,
I came into the world. There were major complications. I
managed to pull through; she didn’t. I’m not
sure good old dad ever knew how difficult the birth was as, the
minute he heard my mother was at the hospital, he got into his
car and drove off. Two weeks later some Halloween trick or
treaters were up to no good in a cabin near Rockwood, Maine just
a few miles west of Moosehead Lake. He’d evidently
broken in, rigged up a plastic hose from the car’s exhaust
into the cabin and laid down on a daybed. He’d been
dead for at least ten days. No note was found.

There was
quite the controversy over the medical bills and what was to
become of poor, innocent me. The Nathans wanted nothing to
do with the situation. They were an older couple anyway,
each beyond fifty. The Banks clan felt I was more a
“Nathan” anathema than anything else. I was the
grenade that destroyed their gifted son’s life.
Therefore, I was ticketed to become a ward of the county which,
in New Hampshire, with no sales or state income tax, is not the
best place to be when you’re in need of social services.

Just when all seemed lost, Ronnie’s oldest sister,
Leona, a black sheep if ever there was one, came to my rescue.
After a checkered career regarding minimum wage employment and
transient, interpersonal relationships, she was living in trailer
park sin with some married guy outside Rutland, Vermont. He
was coughing up big bucks for two kids living with their mother
in Townsend, Massachusetts while waiting for his “freedom
papers” to come through. Leona was thirty-two.
Her biological clock was ticking so she swooped down and took me
unto her ample cleavage and the New Hampshire state treasure
heaved a sigh of relief.

I was nothing but trouble for her at the beginning.
First off, Mr. Sort of Married Guy left her because she didn’t
consult him enough on the adoption matter. Secondly, I
cried, screamed and wailed for the better part of a year.
It was a full time occupation for me. I’d catnap for
a few hours and then get right back to it. There was no
real reason. I was well fed, diapered and certainly got
plenty of attention. I can’t say that I was grieving
because my dead mother and father meant as much to me as any
aborigines in the land down under. Maybe it was to get rid
of Married Guy and have Aunt Leona all to myself. By two,
however, I cut down the sob stuff to about half the day, the
better to explore the mobile home park we lived in.

Enter stage
right one Rebecca Marsden, Becka to my three year old tongue, who
moved in with Leona and me. Becka had a landscaping
business, Ladyslippers, which employed only females. She
was non-stop energy with the rear end of a softball pitcher which
she had been to much acclaim in high school. For the next
four years she was my play buddy and Leona’s live in
lover. Becka and I were addicted to sports. I had the
best equipment money could buy. Skating lessons, hockey
practice, soccer camp, tee ball—you name it, Becka and I
were there. I had little knowledge of what the relationship
between these women was and still didn’t put two and two
together even when, exploring under their bed looking for my
pitcher’s glove, I discovered a strap-on penis.
Leona explained it all with a straight face. She and Becka
sometimes liked to play dress up, and it would embarrass them if
I were to ever mention it to anyone because then Becka might have
to leave. My lips were sealed since I really didn’t
care what dress up games mere girls played.

The rest of my saga now becomes more personal
observation than inference. I was home schooled and picked
up my three by five cards habit making cheat sheets to study new
words as well as taking notes on the books Leona and Becka
thought I should read. Later, I grew accustomed to jotting
down about most everything I observed or thought.

I stuttered a bit when nervous and receiving an
education without public school playground ridicule was a
blessing. I was an arithmetic whiz and lost myself in a
world of history and adventure books quite early. Leona
felt I was the second coming of her brother Ron. It was high
praise, when I accomplished something, to be compared favorably
to my martyred father.

In October, for my eighth birthday, I was given hockey tickets
to see a University of Vermont Catamont’s game.
The contest was for mid-November, and I was really looking
forward to it. Leona had a four wheel drive, silver colored
Subaru. We left in the late afternoon, stopped midway to
Burlington along Route 7 for hot turkey sandwiches and chocolate
milk. I was allowed to run amok in the souvenir shop before
the game and came away with a green and gold, official, Vermont
University hockey jersey which set Becka back $75.00. The
opponents that wonderful evening were the vaunted Boston
University Terriers, perennial Big East champs, but we held our
own into overtime before going down to defeat 3-2.

There had been a cold drizzle on the way to the campus, and by
ten at night it had started to freeze in spots. Becka, ever
the take charge person, decided to drive as she was more
experienced at road conditions like these. We made it to
Brandon on Route 7 just ten miles north of Rutland.

I never knew
what caused the accident. I was in the back seat and had
scribbled a few notes about a heated discussion Becka and Leona
were having. I was feigning sleep, but my ears were wide
open as the subject of Becka’s spoiling me came up,
evidently triggered by the expensive hockey shirt and a glut of
concession stand junk food. I remember the phrase “buying
his affection.” This was angrily refuted and some salvos
were fired back indicating that Leona’s hands were not
entirely clean on the spoiling issue either. They were
quiet for a while. I drifted off but came to when they
began to discuss what I should be told about their relationship.
I remember thinking to look up, “dyke” and “puberty”
when I got home and had a minute to myself. They went
silent again so Becka could concentrate on her driving as the
freezing drizzle had evolved into a heavy, wet snow. I
slipped back into sleep comforted by the greenish glow of the
dash and a pleasant CD version of favorite classical piano
pieces.

I awoke the next day at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in
Rutland. I had a concussion but no other major injuries.
The car hit an icy patch, skidded, struck the shoulder and become
airborne to the degree that it flew over the guardrail and into
some trees. Leona was killed instantly. Becka had a
broken neck and other internal injuries from which she later
recovered but was left paralyzed from the shoulders down for the
rest of her brief life.

Since there were no relatives, my first task, after I was able
to leave the hospital, was to be driven by a social service
caseworker to the mobile home park in Proctor to pack some
clothes and collect whatever personal possessions might fit into
a small cardboard box. I decided to leave most of it
were it was, just taking a few stacks of three by five cards I
could carry, some composition notebooks and a copy of Treasure
Island Becka had given me the Christmas before.

I was then transported to the Brattleboro home of Wanda
Bellows. She specialized in foster care of children with
special needs. She had been doing this for twenty-five
years and proudly pointed to over one hundred pictures on her
kitchen wall of kids she considered family. She opened a
hutch drawer and showered the floor with the many greeting cards
she received. I wasn’t aware of any special needs in
my case, but I can see why the case supervisor might think I was
retarded. I had no school record. My stutter
notwithstanding I wasn’t in much of a speaking mode, just a
shake of the head here and there to keep things interesting.
I didn’t talk because I really had nothing to say.
Yes, it was quite a blow to have two very nice people, to say
nothing of not watching any more Vermont hockey games, taken from
me by some inclement highway conditions. Yet it
wasn’t anything I couldn’t accept. I was asked
on many occasions by clip board toting shrinks what my feelings
were and could only think about the interviews I’d seen on
the TV Eyewitness News where the house is still smoking and a
microphone is shoved into the owner’s face for some sort of
response. I suppose my silence was a way of not dignifying
the idiotic questions I was being asked by state-appointed
psychologists.

So I was shipped off to Mother Bellows’ home for the
physically and mentally challenged. I had two other
colleagues. One was a twelve year old girl with cystic
fibrosis who needed to be thumped at regular intervals to clear
out her lungs. A disgusting process if ever there was one.
A fourteen year old boy who had been born with an oversized head
and had shunts in it to keep the fluid from building up was also
in residence.

I was a godsend to Mrs. Bellows. I cleaned my room,
followed orders and behaved myself. I used my cards to
communicate. I’d write down my questions and
responses. Kenny, he of the swelled head, took delight in
taking them from me or invading my secret places and ripping them
up. This led me to develop any number of codes to maintain
some sense of privacy. The only thing I ever refused to do
was go to school, and I have several diary entries of some
violent behavior on my part when the powers who oversaw such
things wanted to force the issue. Let me alone in my room
with the books borrowed from the Brattleboro Youth Library and my
beloved notebooks, and I was as happy.

Of course this could not last. My theory was that
whenever I approached a comfortable state, the gods would be sure
to notice. The culprit this time was Ben Bellows, Wanda’s
husband of thirty years. It seems he had occupied himself
inappropriately with some of the females in residence over the
years. It was cystic fibrosis girl who spoke up.
Records were gone into, investigations made and young women from
the past stepped forward to tell their tales. Ben had never
been a problem for me. I rather liked the old
geezer. He was a big Red Sox fan, and I often came out of
my room to sit with him as they attempted to defeat the Bambino’s
Curse.

The home was closed. Ben was on the Channel 9 news in an
orange jumpsuit looking very vague. I was interviewed any
number of times and filled out a massive number of note cards to
the effect that Ben was all right in my book and please let him
alone especially since it was September and the Sox were making a
concentrated stretch run for the wild card slot. None of
this made a dent, and I was shipped off to DYS.

I felt I
could adapt to most any place, but DYS was really a challenge.
There was no privacy. I was escorted into a dorm of some
thirty cots, a six foot high by two foot wide locker for clothing
and personal possessions. A one foot square box near the
top for valuables was supposedly secure, but it was a minor
inconvenience to the pros of the unit. I was there for five
months and kept no notes at all. I did go to classes
because it was easier than being disciplined. I sat in the
back row and did my work and the teachers and I soon worked out
an unwritten agreement wherein I wouldn’t cause any
problems if they would ignore me. I survived.

The next development requires some background. Roger
Sheets was a self-made man. The upper social classes are
born knowing how to select a fine merlot or shiraz, how to play a
good game of tennis and when to buy or sell high tech stocks.
Roger was not one of those. After high school there was the
army for two years, then community college, then real college and
finally a job managing an office temporary agency. One
thing led to another and, after ten years of experience in the
“temp” racket as he called it, he opened his own
agency. Within five years he had five branches in Vermont
and New Hampshire.

At fifty-five he was a millionaire and treated himself to a
physical makeover to look ten years younger. Part of this
sloughing off process was losing twenty pounds and his wife
Mary. The new exercise regimen included a daily racquet
ball workout at Off the Wall in Hanover, New Hampshire and
marrying his thirty year old administrative assistant, Bethany.

The union was good for both of them. Roger enjoyed her
companionship while Beth, at a very young age, had financial
security and social status. Children were an issue.
Roger had three girls, two were married and out on their own.
His youngest lived with the first wife, Mary, over in Claremont.
He enjoyed the spontaneity of his new life, picking up and going
wherever and whenever. But Bethany wanted a family.

A compromise was reached when Roger agreed to the foster child
program. He had been through the infant and toddler stages
three times. Therefore, the parameters were that the child
be above the age of four, white and not sickly mentally or
physically.

I really can’t say much for Rodman Hall, but at least it
was determined during my stay that I was not mentally retarded,
that I could speak but just didn’t choose to do it very
much. I was white and didn’t wet the bed. My
slate with respect to torturing small animals and burning down
garages was also pretty clean. As such I was one of five
candidates selected for the Bethany Sheets to inspect.

I think my composure got me the job. We were brought
into the day room as a group, two girls and three boys. At
ten I was the oldest. When Bethany asked me what my
favorite activity was I had the good sense to speak up and say
reading. This led to her follow up questions regarding
books. To my credit I did not show off by going beyond the
general literary bounds expected of my age group. I waxed
poetic about Robert Louis Stevenson with the opinion that a
nice, rainy, Sunday afternoon would ideally be spent
watching all the movie versions of Treasure Island.
I left out my compulsive note taking as I hadn’t done much
of it for fear of exposure, but, when I left the visitor’s
room, I said a little prayer that I would be selected, and that I
might have my privacy back to pursue my secret hobby.

Well, I was the chosen one and one week later I was sitting in
the back seat of Roger’s Lexus SUV as he and Beth drove me
to my new home. It would be an understatement to say that I
had died and gone to heaven. I was shown to a huge room at
the rear of the house, some twenty by twenty-four, which looked
out over an apple orchard. I had my own bathroom, TV and
DVD/VHS player. Beth had a great time clothes shopping, and
I had more outfits than I ever had in all my years combined.
If I’d been the least bit emotional or religious, I would
have dropped to my knees, said a “thank you” prayer
and cried with joy. As it was I took the moment in and idly
wondered just how long it would last before something came along
to fit the life-long pattern of “one step forward, two
steps back” my life usually followed.

Having me or any child was not something Roger wanted.
He was going along with Bethany to get along with her. I
judged by some of her comments that she had taken quite a bit of
abuse from relatives, the home wrecker that she was. She
knew what the gossip had been and still was. It’s the
only thing she’d ever asked for—not furs, jewelry,
cars, etc.—just a child.

The first real conversation Roger and I had was the evening of
my first night. The house had its own library which is to
say that books lined the walls and made an erudite backdrop to
the big screen TV and entertainment center Roger primarily
watched his weekend golf tournaments on. I had wandered
into his sanctuary after a nice family meal wherein Beth
valiantly fed me a steady flow of questions to keep the dinner
conversation afloat, but it was like trying to keep a fire going
by only using kindling.

I was excused from the table (a new concept to me) to wander
the house and get my bearings as it were. I found
Roger’s library, entered and immediately headed for some
very interesting, leather bound volumes. Most were adult
literature, probably first editions, but I did spot a two book
set entitled Anthony Adverse. I was ready to pass it
by when I spotted the name N. C. Wyeth on the spine just below
the author. He’d illustrated the Treasure Island
novel Becka gave me, and I loved it. Becka promised that
for each birthday, she’d buy me an N. C. Wyeth illustrated
book. I pulled a volume off the shelf, plunked to the floor
and began leafing through it before Roger’s furious bellow
jolted me out of my reverie.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

I was actually used to such language and could have given him
an earful, the likes of which, coming from the mouth of a ten
year old, would have stunned him, but I kept quiet.

He grabbed the book and held it behind his back. Books
were not toys. This wasn’t a play room. This
was his room; the only place where he could get any peace and
quiet. I was to never, NEVER come in here unless he asked
me to and, when I did, I was to keep away from the books.
To illustrate the point he pulled a John Irving novel from the
shelf and shoved it into my face.

“This is worth fifteen hundred dollars easy because it’s
a signed first edition. He’s from New Hampshire!”

The tirade had Beth sprinting into the room to see him
towering over me. I think she thought he was either going
to or had hit me with the book. She came at him like a
lioness defending her cub.

When the shouting calmed down, I, knowing how to get along in
the world, took Roger’s part in the matter. It was a
misunderstanding. I wanted to look at the pretty colored
picture books. I didn’t know this was Roger’s
room. It was all a mistake and, if someone would tell me
what other areas I was not allowed in, I would certainly follow
the rules to the letter. The matter ended with Roger’s
statement that I had free run of the house and only this room and
their bedroom was out of bounds. Three days later, perhaps
at Beth’s urging, he invited me to view the ball game on
his large screen, 54 inch projection set. I impressed him
with my baseball knowledge, especially of the Red Sox history
which was largely culled from my notes on Dan Shaughnessy’s
The Curse of the Bambino. Perhaps, in his mind, I
wasn’t that bad after all. He even asked if I’d
ever played golf. I repressed the snide comment that this
year’s orphanage team was scaled back due to a lack of
funding. Instead, I told him I’d only heard about
miniature golf.

“Maybe we’ll go to the driving range some
afternoon,” was his mumbled reply.

When I told Beth of a prospective golf date, she started to
cry and hugged me. “I knew he’d come to love
you as much as I do.”

Leave it to Bethany Sheets to equate love with a number three
wood.

The summer
went well for me. Roger and I did go golfing. At
first it was the driving range. I was a leftie so
instruction was a bit hard for him, but he seemed impressed that
I stayed within myself (his term), concentrated on hitting the
ball straight rather than going for distance. We went to
his country club a few times after that and seemed to bond,
especially during the post-workout meal of hot dogs and
strawberry frappes. Beth decided that, since we liked golf,
we should be a family and go mini-golfing. We did and it
was a disaster from my point of view as Roger clearly saw the
event as a forced march and barely spoke to either of us.

I was enrolled in the Enfield, New Hampshire Middle School and
soon soared to the top of my fifth grade class to the degree that
I was bumped into the sixth after two months. I could just
as well have been in the seventh, but I was small for my age, and
it was thought that adjusting to the other kids might be too
much. Roger and I enjoyed the college football and hockey
season. He was a big Dartmouth fan and we went to a few
games. I still had my Catamonts’ shirt, but I proudly
sported a “Big Green” jersey he bought me. For
Christmas Roger got me my own set of golf clubs, hand made he
said, for just my size. He had to do it because finding
anything for a left-handed kid was impossible.

Beth’s holiday gifts were clothes and books with the
piece de résistance being Robert Louis Stevenson’s
The Black Arrow and Jane Porter’s The ScottishChiefs, each illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. Needless to
say that on Christmas night as I lay on my bed (Red Sox comforter
and matching sheets), reading Stevenson and looking over at my
clubs, I was happier than I’ve ever been. I picked up
my diary and made some modest notes to that effect and then, as I
looked over previous entries, saw that I was about due for a
setback. The formula seemed to follow the exploits of the
legendary Sisyphus. Just as I pushed my boulder to the top
of the mountain and all was right in the world, some outside
force would enter and give it a downward shove. A chill
went through me as I wondered what it would be this time—house
fire, another car accident or the bubonic plague? I always
wrote one note card to sum up each day, a quick sentence which
later was pasted into a scrapbook containing the whole year.
That night’s jotting had a biblical tone to it: “The
end is near.”

It took awhile. I began to withdraw into myself knowing
the sword of Damocles was hovering over me. I still did
well at school and in February was bumped up into the seventh
anyway. I was still a loner. It didn’t matter
who my classmates were. I despised group projects. I
somehow got the notion that by jumping ahead a few grades kids
would treat me better, but that was definitely not the case.
Since I was good at math and took excellent notes, I allowed
myself to be used by my peers when they were stumped or just too
lazy to do the work themselves. I moved away from Stevenson
and was hot and heavy into Jack London, Bret Harte and John
Steinbeck. My room was my sanctuary. I ate supper,
went up to do homework which I finished in less than an hour and
then read myself to an uneasy sleep. I was in my cell on death
row. If only the warden would call and report that the
highest court in the land, as expected, had turned down my
appeal. Just set a date and be done with it. Was that
asking so much?

Sawyer
Sheets was the facilitator of my doom. She was Roger’s
youngest daughter and, as school let out for the year, she had
become too much for her mother to cope with. She was
sixteen. There were the usual symptoms. She was
cutting classes, enough to repeat the ninth grade next year.
She been caught drinking in a car with much older boys and was
sent home from school twice because she was high.
Shoplifting was also part of her agenda as was twice running away
from her mother’s home in Claremont. Though Roger
wanted little to do with this problem child it would be a feather
in his cap if he could prove to his ex-wife that he could turn
the situation around. After all, he had lifted companies on
the verge of Chapter 11 back onto the road of financial success.
You had to be firm. Rules had to be set and consequences
administered. Tough love was the catch phrase.

I am convinced the events that happened would have occurred no
matter what actions I took. I could have run away to Alaska
the moment Sawyer moved in, and my fate would have been the
same. That first night she graced the family table there
were promises made, directions plotted and regulations carved
onto stone tablets. Hugs and tears were served up after
dinner.

The next morning Sawyer invited herself into my room and began
a friendly inquisition. I did not trust her, but I had
little choice. To each query I told the truth. The
shoeboxes were convenient storage for my notes. The shelf
of notebooks contained my jottings, a school project (a tiny
lie). When she took books (“Did you really read all
these?”) off the shelf, I winced when they were put back
out of order but said nothing as it wasn’t a daunting task
to re-establish my system.

She played upon my ego by telling me how much Beth and her
father liked me. What an easy person I was to get along
with and so appreciative. And I had great potential.
They were investing money in a college fund. A good prep
school was even a possibility when I reached high school.
On and on it went.

For two weeks Sawyer kept to the family agreements. She
had a few peccadilloes however. Music was played too
loudly, but immediately turned down after a second request.
She clandestinely used the bathroom to smoke. She had a
girlfriend come up from Claremont to visit, and they spent an
afternoon behind closed doors. By and large dinner usually
focused on her day’s activities and guarded compliments
were issued. I shuddered when suggestions were made that we
might go to the library together. Particularly since, each
time it was obliquely suggested that she should be more like me,
I figured it was another nail in my coffin.

And then in mid-August the death knell finally sounded.
I was invited into her bedroom early one Saturday afternoon when
Roger and Beth were out. She was still wearing a bathrobe,
having just gotten up. The ruse was for me to explain the
plot of Stevenson’s The Black Arrow so she could
better fake having read it since Roger had a bug up his ass about
reading. I sat in a chair while she mounted the bed Indian
style. It was more than obvious she wasn’t wearing
underwear.

At eleven, I was not quite a sexual being. I was
interested however. Displaying her charms was something
Sawyer was accustomed to. Whether through experience or
intuition she knew the male psyche. My curiosity got the
better of me.

When she saw me staring at her she suggested a reward.
Keep her supplied with these book reviews, and I could see her
naked anytime I wanted. She previewed her body with
practiced nonchalance. She lay on the bed and invited me to
inspect her and explained where girls like to be touched,
allowing me the privilege. I was asked to show her my
weenie. I complied then she graphically spoke of what would
happen to my body in a few years. This led to a monologue
concerning Curtis Hannah, a nineteen year old, who had made her
come twice the first time they’d ever done it.

The coda to our interlude was a digital camera. She
wanted me to take pictures of her so she could send them to Curt
as he was getting horny, and she feared he might be tempted by
Louise Stella, her arch rival for his affections. These
shots should be candid, as if she were unaware they were being
done. From the doorway I snapped her pretending to get
undressed. I was ordered to stand outside her half opened
bathroom door and take shots of her putting on makeup as she
stood naked in front of the mirror. Other pictures involved
her showering, peeing, toweling off and drying her hair all from
a voyeuristic photographic point of view. An hour later I
was given a copy of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and
effusive thanks for being the trusted little brother she’d
never had. I went back to my room, replayed the events and
got a sickening feeling in my stomach. Then I went to work
on Ernest’s magnum opus.

It took her until the week before school began to spring the
trap. She probably had it in mind to wait longer, but an
acrid smell of pot led to an adult search of her room and drugs
were found, her Claremont girlfriend the suspected mule.
From then on things played out like a Grade “B”
Hollywood movie. Sawyer wanted to go back to her real mom.
She didn’t feel safe here. Someone was spying on
her. She told them I had the habit of peeping through her
door and maybe taking pictures. My room was searched and
the digital camera was easily discovered. Roger was livid
and, glancing at the photos, turned them over to Beth to be
viewed in their entirety. I was caught red-handed, the
pervert that I was. Roger was in his glory regarding foster
children and lorded his “I told you so’s” over
Beth. Sawyer’s pot smoking incident was lost in the
scandal, but she got her wish and, after a few phone calls, her
mother agreed to take her back.

I said little. I just went to my room to await the
verdict. To save time I began to pack, only clothes this
time. I wanted to make a clean break of it. If there
had been an opportunity, I would have burned all note cards and
notebooks. As it was they stayed were they were along with
my Wyeth illustrated novels and hockey jerseys.
After supper it was Beth who delivered the news. I was
going back to Rodman Hall eventually, but there was a necessary
holding pattern in another facility for a few days while some
doctors asked me questions. She was sure another family
would want a bright boy like me. I debated whether I should
tell my side, but knew it was useless. She’d have to
convince Roger and hell would freeze before that would happen.

I left. I spent the next three days under observation.
Many questions were asked. I answered very few, just the
name, rank and serial number like army POW’s. I ended
back in Rodman Hall. It was a smaller dorm this time with
six others about my own age. They each had interesting
tales to explain why they were as segregated as I was from the
regular population.

I’m
seventeen now. I’ve kept my nose clean. I’m
the star of the baseball team, but who couldn’t be as we
barely have enough to run a decent practice. I’ve
learned a few dumb things at the school. It has a
vocational slant to it. I can fix computers and have toyed
around with arc welding. I keep my notes in my head now.
I read a book long ago, Fahrenheit 451, where people in
the society became novels; memorized them because books were
outlawed. Each night I go over what I would have written
about the day and make sure it’s securely fastened in my
brain. When I’m eighteen I can leave here. The
first thing I want to do is go to a decent library and write lots
of stuff down. When I get done, I’ll send Beth and
Roger a copy as well as my Nathan and Banks grandparents if they
are still alive; maybe Sawyer also, assuming she can tear herself
away from the missionary position long enough to get in some
reading. There might be others as well. It’s
enough of a project to keep me going for the short term.

D.
E. Fredd lives in Townsend Harbor, Massachusetts. He teaches
English at a small New Hampshire college. He has had poetry
appear inThe Paris
Review, Café Review, and The
Paumanok Review.His short fiction has or will
soon appear inThe
Southern Humanities Review, The Transatlantic Review, Rosebud,
The Armchair Aesthete, Word Riot, andThe
13th Warrior Review. A novelExiled
to Moaband a short story collection await
publication.

Copyright
2005, D.E. Fredd. This work is protected under the U.S.
copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or
altered without the expressed written permission of the author.